


by these labors do we keep the wolves at bay

by ghostrunner



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-21
Updated: 2007-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:11:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostrunner/pseuds/ghostrunner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter already knows what Sylar's mouth tastes like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by these labors do we keep the wolves at bay

  
It must be understood that to a man who can fold time and space, a chronological rendering of events is not necessarily the most sensible way to arrange things.

\---  
Sylar's lip is bleeding where Peter clipped him with a bookcase. A lucky shot that snapped his head back into the wall and gained Peter a few moments reprieve from the onslaught of nuclear fire. Peter can imagine the coppery tang of the blood under his tongue.

This is because Peter already knows what Sylar's mouth tastes like.

\---

Deep down, Sylar knows that Peter is more powerful than he is.

This is a simple fact. Peter has abilities that Sylar does not. Any abilities Sylar acquires, Peter will absorb soon after they come into contact again.

Sylar keeps coming back to Peter because Peter is a challenge. To beat Peter, Sylar has to be faster than he is. More vicious than he is.

It’s hard to be faster than a man who can stop time. And these days, Peter is perfectly capable of being vicious.

\---

Sylar flash freezes a thrown piece of pipe to the nearest article of broken furniture (might be a chair, or half a table), slams Peter into the wall with a particularly well timed telekinetic force and… pauses.

Braced for another attack, Peter starts to dodge sideways, and then looks down at the two-foot piece of cross-shaft though his chest that pins him in place.

Sylar gives him a triumphant little smile, all teeth and wild hair and bottomless eyes. He sways closer, reaches out and touches Peter’s face, gently. Peter gags. Coughs blood.

Sylar’s grin intensifies; he drags his thumb through the blood and uses it to paint Peter’s lips a bright, shocking red. Then he leans in and licks it off, his mouth hot and sweet and Peter gives in for a moment. For a terrible, wonderful, awful, aching moment, and then bites down as hard as he can and folds space with Sylar’s blood under his tongue.

\---

There are some abilities that they have in common. People that Peter met before Sylar killed them. It is an unspoken agreement that they try to avoid using the same powers on each other.

Neither can forget what happened years ago in Isaac’s loft. Isaac’s power doubling in on itself and leaving them both shaking and wrecked in the paint smeared, sweat soaked aftermath.

\---

Sylar wants to know how Peter works more than he’s wanted anything, ever. He wants to pin Peter down and take him apart inch by slow, wet inch.

He wants to see what makes Peter tick.

This is why he keeps coming back. It has nothing to do with Peter’s sharp, white teeth and long fingers.

\---

Another time, Peter is not so lucky. Sylar TK’s a Masai lion spear though the underside of Peter’s bicep and deep into the marble-tiled floor of what was once the Museum of Natural History.

Peter closes his eyes on Sylar’s grin, focuses Hiro’s power as best he can under the rather strained circumstances, and when he opens them again Sylar’s grin is sharper and closer and his hands are bruising on the tops of Peter’s thighs.

He can’t do it. He’s lost too much blood and he won’t heal like this, pinned on his back like an insect in a display case. He tries to bring a leg up to his chest, to kick or simply to shield but Sylar grabs his knee and forces his leg to the side and bracing against Sylar’s strength makes the muscles in Peter’s pinned arm scream and his vision go spotty so he loses that struggle.

Sylar leans over him, knees between Peter’s thighs, grinning like a sharp-toothed caricature of himself and Peter can almost taste the madness behind his eyes except he knows that’s the wrong sense.

Sylar’s thoughts are dark and gleeful and shockingly specific. He spends a lot of time thinking about Peter and maybe that’s not too surprising; that a mass murdering megalomaniac would spend a significant amount of his downtime contemplating the only person remotely capable of stopping him but the particulars of his thoughts are… unsettling.

Sylar spends a lot of time thinking about Peter like this, just like this. About Peter pinned helpless and bleeding between Sylar’s own body and no escape. About blood smeared across the perfect pout of Peter’s lower lip and about what it would be like to fuck him like this. To pin him down slick with his own blood and take him.

Peter recoils from the swirling miasma of Sylar’s surface thoughts, disgusted and frightened. This close to Sylar he has no trouble focusing the man’s own power against him and the telekinetic blast that throws him back off of Peter and into a sheet-draped display of Neanderthals would have toppled an ocean liner.

The lion spear gives him some trouble, and Peter swears ripping it out of his arm is the most painful thing he’s experienced since the time Sylar started to take the top of his head off, but the thoughts of himself spread out under Sylar’s hands are highly motivating.

He should stay, he should finish this or at least _try_ , he’s never been successful before.

Sylar laughs from the corner, low and wicked and taunting.

Peter runs.

\---

  
They’re only twenty feet up. Not even four stories. Not nearly high enough for the upper air to be whistling cold and sharp through Sylar’s clothes. There must be some other explanation for the crawling sensation along his spine.

He knew he’d made a mistake when he’d stepped backward onto a patch of melted park fountain a twist of Zane Taylor’s power had made, and slipped. Peter had taken the opening to fist his hands in Sylar’s jacket and haul him straight up into the air.

It’s not a particularly exciting or unusual power, Sylar thinks, but Peter has it and that makes him want it desperately.

Peter is thinking about Sylar hitting the ground below when Peter lets him go. About how satisfying the resulting sound will be. He is not thinking about Sylar’s fingers digging into his arms as he holds onto Peter for dear life.

Sylar cannot fly, Peter knows. The telekinesis can only be used on external objects. If Peter drops him, he will fall.

Sylar is his current purpose in life. Without Sylar, Peter will have to move on from the constant-battle mentality that has carried him through the last few years. He’ll have to pick up the pieces. Call Nathan. Find Claire. He can’t deal with that yet.

Peter is not stupid. He wants Sylar dead. He _needs_ Sylar dead. But perhaps not quite like this.

Sylar’s eyes are wide and panicked; his grip on Peter’s arms is beyond painful, edging towards numb. “Peter,” he starts to say…

Peter lets him go. It’s only twenty feet. A cockroach will survive.

\---

Peter is dead.

This is not new. Sylar has seen him stay dead for up to ten minutes at a time before gasping and clawing his way back to life. The last time Peter died in his presence Sylar was prevented from taking advantage of his very timely, if brief, demise by the interference of several other “heroes” who he had not yet had the opportunity to kill.

This time, Sylar stands alone under a highway overpass as Peter’s body tries to expel half a dozen .22 caliber bullets. Peter could be dead for a long while, he thinks.

He shivers with the possibilities.

\---

 _fin_

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of shout-outs to [](http://entangled-now.livejournal.com/profile)[**entangled_now**](http://entangled-now.livejournal.com/) are included here, specifically to [Painted](http://community.livejournal.com/libraryofsol/23597.html). Which I declare canon.


End file.
